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Comment by andmarios | Hacker News Reader

There aren't 2000 flavors of Linux. I would guess there are about 10 GNU/Linux distributions that matter to most people.

Given that there are about 7+ billion people on earth, I have a very difficult time trying to understand what “linux fragmentation” is. If you think we should all use the same OS, does the same thought process applies to governments, shoes, food, etc?

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Careful about oversimplification there. To put it another way: would you suggest that everyone build their own car? Perhaps people care less about operating system choice than you think. Remember, people within our domain of knowledge represent a very small minority of those seven billion people.

I missed the suggestion that everyone should build their own OS, and note that there are hundreds of largely incompatible models of car successfully sharing the road.

I don't think you understood what he meant. AFAICT he said that there is not that big fragmentation considering how big community is - and not that everyone should use different OS. Maybe people do care less about OS choice than car choice but that doesn't mean it is less important.

Btw, people from almost any domain represent small minority compared to seven billion people.

> would you suggest that everyone build their own car?

Not sure where are you going with that. There are several hundred different models of car for sale around the world. And still several hundred that count.

There are some tens of Linux distros that count. That is indeed evidence that people mostly don't care about them, and that's what the GP was arguing.

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